The horses whinnied and snorted, below, as Henry and Annie rested upon a rock unreachable by the couple of Drifters that stumbled and shambled below. He still found it fascinating that Drifters didn't kill and eat animals. Only humans. It perplexed him that only human flesh satisfied their hunger, though, he had to admit, he had never seen a Drifter stop eating due to a full belly. Skinchangers were a different matter. They ate everything. Murcies, Henry knew little about, save they craved blood, not flesh, and chose their kills with care.

The knife turned between his fingers, fingers that still maintained a slight tint of blood that he had not managed to scrub away. He did not wish to consider what he looked like. No doubt he still carried blood in his hair. His clothing had dried, but the dark spatters that dotted the front of his jacket told him he would need to engage the services of a washerwoman as soon as they returned to the civilised environs of Prescott.

Annie had laid back upon the rock, hat covering her face, resting her head upon arms and hands curled under her. One leg raised, the other straight, he heard her singing beneath the hat, but could not make out the words or the tune. She appeared none-the-worse for their encounter at the cabin upon Granite Peak.

If only he could say the same for himself. He had never killed a man. Indeed, he had never felt an urge to kill anyone or anything in his entire life, no matter the provocation. This knife, the knife given to him by Annie, had almost plunged into Hennessy, thrust by his own hand. He had wanted to kill Hennessy. Needed to. Henry had never believed in evil until he encountered that man and now knew that mankind was the real evil in this world. Not Satan. Not any adversary of God. Man. Illustrated in the words and actions of a man that had embraced becoming a monster in body to add to the monster in his mind.

"You're pissed that I left you, ain't ya?" She hadn't removed her hat, talking to him from beneath the black felt. "You got a right to. Can't disagree none on that."

"Yes. No. Somewhat." He pressed his thumb against the point of the knife, pricking the skin and watching a bead of blood form. "The Sheriff said as much, and you did too. And I fear I did not quite believe it, but I should have listened to you both. I will not ignore warnings in the future."

She sat up, taking the hat from her face and returning it to her head. As she did so, she glanced down at the two Drifters that stretched desiccated arms up toward her. They hissed as dirty, broken fingernails scraped against the surface of the stone, leaving trails of filthy residue in lines. She balled up a wad of spit, allowing it to drip from her pursed lips and fall upon the head of one Drifter. It didn't even notice, jaw stretching as it tried to bite something too high above to reach.

"I needed a sacrificial goat. You were it. I ain't gonna apologise for that and I weren't too far away." She reached in to her vest pocket and looked at the chewed remnant of the cigar she never seemed to smoke for long. That, too, dropped upon the head of the Drifter. "Outside, in that clearin', Hennessy had all the advantages. He was more animal than man and I knew he'd chase the easy prey first. I just had to bide my time. If'n he'd got near to killin' y'all, I'd'a stopped him, but we wouldn't have survived, 'less'n he were inside that cabin. Distracted."

All the while, she rummaged through the saddlebags she had tossed up onto the rock before clambering up after them. Henry had not fared near as well at climbing, but he had made it, safe away from any chance of Drifters catching them unawares. Now, she pulled out a box, opened the lid and smiled as she removed a fresh cigar. She offered one to Henry, which he declined.

He knew she was right. If he allowed himself to consider it, it was a good strategy that had paid off, but Henry could never forget the pounding of his heart, the stench of Hennessy's breath upon his face. The utter certainty that he was, indeed, merely a man. Mortal. Fragile. Hennessy had threatened to bite him, to turn him into one of those things, and Henry could not resolve the sheer terror he had felt at that thought. Hennessy would have made Henry an abomination. He had deserved to have the knife, this knife, plunging into his black heart.

"I wanted to kill him." He pressed a finger against the bubble of blood that had grown enough to threaten to trickle along the grooves upon his skin, flattening the blood and rubbing it into his skin. His own blood, not someone else's. "I wanted to thrust this knife into him and end his life. Me! I'm a reporter! I can kill a man with words without ever setting foot in his vicinity, but right there? The knife in my hand? I ... I do not like what that man made me."

"You hate yourself for even thinking it?" She bit the end from the fresh cigar, rolling the piece across the inside of her lips before spitting it to the side. She squinted one eye, pointing at him with the cigar. "Good. The day you stop hating yourself for thinking of killing, the day you kill someone and it don't mean nothin' 'cept that you're gonna need to reload? That's the day you stop bein' a good man and the world still needs good men."

"And good women." The implication passed her by as Henry watched her scratch a match and light the new cigar. She dropped the lit match down on the Drifter's head.

A breeze ruffled Henry's jacket, taking his mind away from Annie and whether he could consider her a good woman or not. He shivered as the wind caught in the tear in the shoulder of his jacket and it reminded him how close he had come to having an axe buried in his chest. He shrugged the jacket from his arms and poked a finger through the hole from the inside. At least it wasn't his Sunday best.

His bag, containing all his writing supplies and other odds and ends, he had wrapped over his shoulder as he had climbed on to the rock and now he remembered why he had carried the bag instead of leaving it attached to the horse's saddle. He hadn't intended writing down his notes and thoughts about the day, not yet. They all still brewed in his mind, trying to find the right words to describe everything he had seen and experienced. What the bag did hold, was a needle and thread. An everyday essential.

He needed something normal. Something banal. Anything to take his mind away from the day's events. He couldn't fold himself into his writing, it remained far too raw and real for that. That could only serve to remind him of the reality of it all. The thoughts that had run through his head, the terror, the fury. All too substantial to put down in words that heightened emotions would corrupt into something far too personal and intimate. He needed his professional detachment to hold sway. The people needed facts, though they thirsted for sensationalism. He would not sensationalise this day.

As those thoughts had tumbled through his mind, he had taken the needle, threaded it and knotted the end. With his jacket gathered upon his knees, he tried to focus upon this one, singular task. The needle, popping between the weave of his jacket, curling over to dig into the material at the other side of the rip. A pull and a tug to bring both sides together. Yet his hand faltered after the needle had emerged from the material.

Visions of the two prongs of Annie's pitchfork bursting from Hennessy's chest, spraying blood across Henry and up the log wall. Hennessy's back arching, handless arms scrabbling to reach the entry point of his wound. Sharp teeth bared in a pained grimace. That one eye, staring. Staring. Staring. Henry pushed his jacket from his knees and almost started to scramble backward before remembering his precarious position. The Drifters below noticed the movement and hissed in anticipation.

Without saying a word, Annie clamped the cigar between her teeth and lips, then reached over for Henry's jacket. Turning it over and over in her hands, holding it up to squint with one eye, the other closed against the wisp of cigar smoke that trailed from the lit end, she tilted her head until she caught sight of the dangling needle. With that in hand, she spread the jacket over her knees and tutted at Henry's aborted effort.

Seconds later, after biting the thread loose and starting again, Annie had started sewing. Henry felt foolish at his reaction. The needle was not the tines of Annie's pitchfork. His jacket was not the monstrous, evil form of Hennessy. Cowed, he watched Annie's fingers dance across the material of his jacket. Practised fingers that had performed such sartorial surgeries often, in the past, he did not doubt. The skills of a mother, perhaps?

"It's a terrible thing." She rolled the cigar to the other side of her mouth, closing the other eye and squinting with the rested one. A glance upward as she tugged the thread tight and pushed the needle back into the material for another stitch. "Seeing death waitin' for ya. Seen it myself, many'a time. Never gets easier. I figure, best not to dwell. It happened. Move on. If you let it, them there thoughts can kill a man as easy as a bullet. Or teeth."

She bit the thread, finishing the repair, before turning the jacket back to it's right side and tugging at both sides of the repair. Satisfied, she tossed the jacket back to Henry. He didn't want to appear rude toward Annie's efforts, but he wanted to check the repair, anyway. As he had thought, the stitches were clean, tight and ordered. As good a repair as any he had seen.

He couldn't help but wonder, once again, whether this woman was, indeed, Annabelle Potter. The mother. The wife. Had she stitched up the clothes of her son after a day's running around, doing those simple, but rugged things that children were want to do? Playing rough games, going where they shouldn't. Had Annie called that boy home after a day's chores and exploration? He couldn't see it at most times.

His fingers traced over the repair and he looked up toward Annie, but other things had caught her attention. A few more Drifters had wandered along, the sight of their rotting kin stretching for two fat morsels upon a rock had caught their attention. With a sigh, Annie picked up her pitchfork. The newcomer Drifters had started to spook the horses even more. As she dropped down to the ground, Henry considered that tear, fixed by Annie, ignoring the sickening sounds of the pitchfork destroying the brains of the dead.

"Best not to dwell." With a pat upon the repair, he coughed, taking a breath, and then spun the jacket around, pushing his arms into the sleeves, and enjoyed the respite from the cold breeze. "I believe that is far easier for some people than others. Far easier."

Easy for Annie, at least.